


The Fear of Falling

by eponymous_rose



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 18:30:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6969265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vex stares into the abyss of her brushes with death and finds something smiling back. </p><p>Spoilers through Episode 52.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fear of Falling

The first time, she's stumbling into a courtyard with dread clenching her chest, silence echoing her scream. Her palm is sweating against her bow, but the hand nocking the arrow is steady. She knows, in a sick-sure way, that it will fly true.

Don't wait for it to land, avert eyes from the spark and catch of lightning. Reach back, fingers numb and fumbling in the quiver. Fire a second time.

This one's more of a surprise, sparking bright and warm from an uncontrolled tremor in her arms, curving and recurving inevitably along the path she's set it. She feels, through the strange whisper of divination linking her to her quarry, a surge of satisfaction at the roar of magical arrows meeting flesh. But she doesn't dare breathe, not yet. Her brother is crumpled in the grass, dead or dying at the feet of monsters.

Lady Briarwood sees her, and then Lady Briarwood Sees Her. In the dying embers of the arrow's flame, Vex watches her raise a finger.

The first time, death is distant, glimpsed from afar. A crush of urgency, a stunning horror at her own unfinished thoughts, a perverse sense of longing, and then she's swaying on her feet in the cold, cold night air, her limbs numb and heavy and hanging.

Her brother coughs, gasping for breath, and in the cacophony of gunfire and shouting she thinks, dazedly, that she's traded her life for his. When his wide, terrified eyes meet hers in the darkness, she's no longer certain what he's looking at. What he's looking for.

Later, she takes most of his weight against her shoulder, listens to him mumble nonsense as the blood dries against his throat and her armor. Tells herself, this is happening, this has happened. Leans into him as he leans into her. Breathes.

The first time Vex experiences death firsthand, she's stumbling, not entirely certain she's made it back. The first time, she's not sure it matters.

* * *

There is a tree.

The woods outside Byrodin are forever warm and sun-dappled in her memory, although she knows there must have been rain and snow and sleet at some point in time. Probably windstorms, too. Periodic swarms of locusts. Death and plague and pestilence. But that's the sort of shit Vax would remember. She'll leave him to wallow in that.

In _her_ memory, the woods are warm.

There is a tree, because there is always a tree when there are children to climb it. She and Vax hang off its limbs and talk about the village, about the entire world that lies between the cobbler's shop and the solid wooden fenceposts marking the start of the farmlands. They know the tree better than any of those places, have fought over every branch. Vax puffs himself up when she climbs too high, calls her Stubby, tells her she's too little. She grins at him, tells him she left him the best branch because she thought she was being nice, but if he really doesn't want it she'd be more than happy to leave this silly high branch and go sit on the nice, comfortable, spacious lower branch...

He's too smart not to know she's trying to pull something, but he's also not quite sure he's getting the bad end of the bargain. That hesitation fades with age, gives way to an indulgent smile that's equal parts obnoxious and endearing. This time, though, she sits on the highest branch with all the satisfaction of a victory well-won while her brother perches sullen and silent on the next branch down. She calls to him, something warm with a teasing edge, but what she always remembers about this moment, about this day, is the way his face changes a moment before the branch beneath her snaps.

She's experienced a lot of pain in her life—it sort of comes with the territory—but very little compares to the feeling of waking in a daze and trying to prop herself up on her shattered arm. Most of what follows has mercifully blurred from her memory, but she still remembers the unfamiliar emptiness of _alone_. Vax avoids her for weeks, even after the healers painstakingly restore the use of her arm, even after she finally loses the strange catch in her breathing every time she exerts herself. More to the point, Vax avoids the tree, tells their mother it should be cut down, it's too dangerous. He sleeps curled against the wall, tense with an unfamiliar anger, and while she's bedridden she listens to his breathing from across their room and doesn't know what to say.

One night, Vex pulls herself out of bed, pads soft-footed across the packed-earth floor. Climbs out the window, gritting her teeth against the strain in her ribs, and makes a beeline for the tree, skeletal and sparse in the moonlight, ignoring her brother's increasingly frantic shouts behind her. She grips a branch, tests her weight, and hauls herself arm-over-aching-arm until she's right at the top, ignoring the jagged edge of the broken branch in favor of leaning out into the warm summer night. She laughs, long and hard. She feels like she's flying.

Years later, Vax tells her, "You didn't have anything to prove with that fucking tree, you know," and she smiles and says, "What makes you think I was trying to prove anything?" and for a moment his face screws up like a child trying to work out whether he's just gotten the bad end of the bargain.

There is a tree. Was a tree.

* * *

The second time, she's flying high above the Ziggurat, weaving in and out of darkness.

She's really trying very hard not to enjoy this—her friends are hurting, her brother is staring vacantly next to Trinket, Percival is desperately trying to parry a flurry of greatsword blows with his rapier, and everything's taking on that distinctly distasteful end-of-the-world hue—but there's something wild and thoughtless and a little callous in her, some spark that's catching an ember. She wants this, needs this, the height, the advantage, the shadows. The distance feels like power in and of itself, like the chill of gold coin in her hand and the knowledge that comes with it: this is real, this is inviolate, this is something that cannot be taken away from her. Not this time.

She's better this way, more than she was. This is the rage in Grog's eyes, the cloak over her brother's shoulders, the flame in Keyleth's hands, the medallion over Pike's heart, the song in Scanlan's throat. The gun at Percy's belt. This is more than she was and all that she needs. She fights brave and reckless and bold. She fights well. She hovers, victorious, at the small spinning center of the end of the world.

But Lady. Briarwood. Sees. Her.

The second time, the familiarity of the outstretched hand strikes her before the spell, and so the bulk of the fear comes from memory. A physical jolt, something tearing deep inside, and she drifts, tumbling through nothing, the breath rattling in her chest. But she will not let her take this away. She will not fall. Lady Briarwood sees her flying, and her face twists, and Vex thinks, all right, suck on that one, you creepy necromancer _fuck_.

The air around her pulses. A creeping heaviness comes to her limbs, her eyelids. Her body. She plummets. She's dashed against the shattered stonework.

The thick swell of blood in her mouth, drowned by the sweet-sharp taste of a potion, and still the heaviness, the slow inexorable pull of all things toward what lies beneath. A hand at the side of her face, a voice cracking with urgency and panic. Fade. Jostling motion, strong arms gripping her with bruising force, and gods, the smell, it's got to be Grog. Mumble something. Stretch a hand up to his face. Feel his brief, worried smile. Fade again.

Arms tightening around her from behind, as though to shield her. Vax's voice wavering, hoarse and whispering into her hair, "It's all right, it's all right." She reaches, weakly, to grasp at his wrist, but he doesn't respond. He's shaking. He sounds like he doesn't know he's speaking.

He's turned her away from the Ziggurat, so her eyes are focused on the flickering shadows above them. Her heart is thrumming too-fast, a flurry of wingbeats trapped inside her ribcage. The fear has faded back into memory. She's smiling.

The second time Vex experiences death firsthand, she's flying. The second time, she wants nothing more than to fly again.

* * *

"You have a pet bear."

Vex grins and sits cross-legged, presses her back against Trinket's fur, feels him huff and grumble at the disruption of his beauty sleep. "Is that a problem?"

The gnome—Scanlan is his name, that's right—is genuinely speechless for the first time since she's met him; his mouth works soundlessly for a moment. "No, no, that's perfectly normal. Why wouldn't you have a pet bear? I hear all the fashionable ladies in Emon are bearing it up this year."

"Yeah they are!" the goliath—Grog—calls from across the camp.

From somewhere in the trees behind her, Vax snorts. "What does that even mean?"

Scanlan grins; Vex watches him try to focus his eyes on her brother in a losing battle against the shadows. "I have no idea, but I like how salacious it sounds. You two are a little twitchy, aren't you?"

Vex shrugs. Trinket huffs again with the drawn-out snore sound he makes when he's only pretending to sleep. "We've been traveling alone a long time. Old habits and all that."

"All right, but we've got Princess Hearts-and-Rainbows over there. She wouldn't hang out with us if we were all that bad."

Vex follows the line of Scanlan's nod to see Keyleth and Tiberius sitting side-by-side closer to the fire, both lost in their reading. Keyleth, who has flowers braided into her hair. Keyleth, who has a godsdamned _bluebird_ perched on her shoulder. Vex winces. "You may have a point."

"And I'd be more than happy to show it to you sometime." He winks, and gods, does nobody respect the lascivious arts these days? Poor technique on that wink, overcommitment, more of a lopsided squint than anything else. Tragic, really.

Trinket grumbles softly behind her. Scanlan stumbles back a step. "But it's safe, though? The bear?"

" _He_ ," Vex says, "is a very sweet bear. His name is Trinket."

"You have a pet bear named Trinket." Scanlan's voice jumps an octave. "Is that _blood_ on his claws?"

She shrugs. "Sometimes he gets hungry."

"I'm so glad that we've decided to embark on this adventure together with a hearty spirit of mutual respect and abject terror," Scanlan says, all in one breath. "And speaking of food..."

For the first time, she notices he's holding two wooden bowls, comically large in his hands; he holds them out with a smile, and she catches the scent of meat and maybe even a hint of herbs. Her stomach clenches as she takes a bowl from him. "Thank you."

Behind her, there's an exaggerated rustle of leaves and snapping of twigs as her brother strides back into the dim firelight. "About time we had some real food to eat on the road," he says, snatching the bowl right out of her hands. "I'm almost as bad at cooking as this shithead, and she nearly burned down a forest trying to roast a chicken."

"That was one time!"

She tries to grab the bowl back, but Vax fades out of reach with a smirk, settling down to sit next to Trinket's rump. "She always makes me sleep at the ass-end," he says, mournfully.

Scanlan, with a look of profound confusion, says, "I'm... sorry?"

Vex reaches out and takes the second bowl from Scanlan with a wink. "Oh, don't feel bad for him, he just naturally gravitates there. With the rest of the farts."

"This is the quality comedy you signed up for when you brought us on board, by the way," Vax says. "You're welcome."

And then he goes very, very quiet and still. She turns to see him looking into the bowl, brow furrowed, and... yeah, okay, she should have recognized it before. "Rabbit stew?"

"Sure," Scanlan says. "Seeing as how you trapped a couple rabbits and all."

Vax, his face shuttered, places his bowl on the ground and stands. "I'm going to do some scouting." And with that, he vanishes back into the shadows.

"Okay?" says Scanlan. "Bye?"

Vex sighs, digging into her meal with gusto. Trinket, giving up on the pretense of sleep, sniffs hopefully next to her, but she pushes his snout away. "You got your dinner earlier, darling." Halfway through the bowl, she realizes Scanlan's still standing in place, watching her. "Everything all right?"

"Sure, sure. But what's with your brother? Is it something I said? I'm usually so great at first impressions."

"For what it's worth, I don't believe that for a minute. But no, it's nothing you said. He'll be fine." Vex smiles, and after a moment's hesitation nods to the discarded bowl. "You should eat that so it doesn't go to waste. He'll be back."

Scanlan looks at her, looks at Trinket, looks at the food, looks at Trinket again, then moves cautiously over to pick up the bowl. Standing, he was nearly at eye-level with her seated form. Sitting on the dirt with an oversized bowl in his lap, he seems impossibly small. "All right. So that happened. Is this a thing with him? Is he just gonna go all tall-dark-and-broody at the drop of a hat?"

Vex chews thoughtfully on a piece of gamey meat. "Rabbit stew was our favorite meal as children."

"Okay," Scanlan says. "So I messed up some family recipe?"

"Our mother used to make it as a special treat for us."

"Okay," Scanlan says, again, and then he blinks. "Used to. All right. I think I understand."

"Mm," Vex says. Trinket, sensing her distress, presses his nose against her elbow, and she shifts to give him a good scratch behind the ears. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

Scanlan smiles, this time without pretense, and in that moment she finds herself mentally revising her estimation of his age by a decade or more. "I've been told I'm very easy to talk to. Listen, I'm sure we've all got our messed-up family histories, but there's strength in numbers. These things are harder to face alone."

She shrugs. "That's the thing about me and my brother: we've got each other. Always have, always will. We're never alone."

He mirrors her shrug. "And the two of you have been traveling alone a long time. Your words, not mine. But I understand. Believe me, I understand. I know it never gets any better, not really. And I'll make sure we don't make rabbit stew again."

"I like it fine," she says, scraping at the bottom of her bowl. "It's good to taste it again. I think I could eat rabbit stew every meal for the rest of my life and be perfectly content."

He chews, watching her thoughtfully. "You know, I think I understand him better than I understand you."

She sets the bowl down by her feet. "It was always my favorite, Scanlan. Nothing's changed."

He scratches the side of his nose, opens his mouth as though to speak, then shakes his head and says instead, "I think I'm going to like you people. You're all as messed up as I am. Good night, Vex."

"Good night," she says, and presses back into Trinket's fur, letting the warmth of food in her belly carry her down into a soft, dreamless sleep.

* * *

The third time, there is a void.

Her vision swims for a moment before sharpening, startlingly clear at the edges. For a moment, she'd swear the dimly lit, crumbling tomb around her is carved from some delicate metal filigree; the details stand out plainly, shimmering behind the motes of dust in the air. But she can't remember lying down. She's cold.

"You were knocked out," her brother whispers, not meeting her eyes.

"Knocked out." Nothing hurts. Her breathing is easy. She feels... she feels fine.

"Yeah."

The third time, she tries a laugh that rings too-loud and hollow, watches Kashaw sink down with an exasperated groan, his back against a pillar, watches Percival hide his face in his hands, feels Zahra's steadying grip on her shoulder. There are tears, she notices, streaking along her brother's downturned face. Even as she watches, he curls away from her scrutiny, from Keyleth's nervously outstretched hand, and there's a hint of the old frustration there, the _alone_ she's always hated.

But she's cold and she can't remember lying down.

"You fucking _died_ ," Grog says, wide-eyed, and even in the wash of terrified confusion she could kiss him for coming right out and saying it, she really could. And then there's a flurry of activity, Trinket's stinky breath and worried grunts right up in her face, Zahra's cloak fastened around her shoulders to ward off the chill, a deluge of questions she doesn't know how to answer. She watches her brother walk away, out through the entrance of the chamber, the rage and terror coming off him in waves, and she wants to tell him it's all right, it's all right, she doesn't remember a thing. It didn't even hurt, this time.

Keyleth says, "What does this mean?" and Kashaw says, "To be honest, I have no idea," and Vex doesn't know either, not really, not until Zahra places the Arrow of Dragon-Slaying in her hands. At that point, everything becomes very, very simple.

The third time Vex experiences death firsthand, there is a void of fear and memory so large she could hide in it forever. The third time, she thinks that void might just give her room enough to soar.

* * *

She finds Pike standing in the corridor outside their rooms in the mansion, fastening a clasp that's come loose on her breastplate. The heavy plate mail seems to draw in every flicker of dim lighting, casting a faint glow of its own, and for a moment Vex feels the unfamiliar ache of self-consciousness. Even fumbling with her armor, muttering under her breath, there's an understated strength that comes with being the conduit of a deity...

Pike glances up and smiles, the beginnings of laugh-lines pulling at the scar over her eye. "Vex! Can you give me a hand with this?"

"Of course," Vex says, and bends to push the awkward hook into place.

"It's very inconvenient armor," Pike says, conversationally. "I have to adjust it so often, and what a racket it makes! But I think I'm glad for it, most days."

Vex rests a hand on her shoulder. "We're glad you wear it too, believe me."

Pike sniffs, gives her mace an experimental swing, then pauses, her face falling. "Oh, I just realized it's nearly time for bed anyway. I shouldn't have bothered with it, I'll just have to pull it off in a moment."

"D'you want a hand with it?"

"Oh, it's fine, it's fine, I'll manage somehow." Pike hesitates, then looks up. "Your hand's still on my shoulder, Vex."

Vex pulls back. "Sorry! Sorry. I was lost in thought."

"Okay," Pike says, "what's wrong?"

With a nervous laugh, Vex backs up a pace. "Who said anything was wrong? I'm just walking, I thought you could use a hand, I sort of spaced out for a moment. That's all."

"You're not as easy to read as Vax, but you're still not very good at pretending everything's all right." Pike cocks her head to one side. "Why don't you come in?"

"What a strange suggestion. All right," Vex says, breezing past her into the room, and then pauses. "Wow. Scanlan wasn't kidding about the flower petals."

"It does smell really nice in here," Pike says, dropping her mace in a corner and bending to peel off her boots. "So what's going on?"

Vex moves to a corner of the room. Crosses her arms. "Pike... do you remember dying?"

Pike freezes midway through pulling off a boot, and Vex sees her hands twitch in an abortive grab toward the medallion at her throat. "All right," she says, "I wasn't expecting that."

"I don't mean to be maudlin. I don't want to make you relive that. I shouldn't have come, I should just—"

Pike stumbles up, one boot halfway off her foot, to stand in the doorway, arms outstretched to block her passage. "No, no, I was just, I was just startled is all, it's okay, it's good that you're talking about this. You and I are the only ones who know what it's like."

Vex exhales, with a nervous laugh, the breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Right? We're the only ones. And it's just been a couple of days. I'm still sort of wrapping my head around it."

"So am I, to be honest. All right. Sit down." Pike watches her sternly until she perches on the edge of the bed, then bends back down to her boots. "Okay. Well, you were there when I died. You remember what it was like."

Vex's breathing catches, and for a moment there's a familiar tightness in her chest, a prickling behind the eyes. "Yeah," she says, hoarsely. "I'm not likely to forget that anytime soon. There was... there was really rather a lot of blood."

Pike's hunched shoulders square up for a moment. "I actually remember bits and pieces, or at least I think I do, I'm not sure if I'm just. Anyway. I remember Grog screaming, I remember how much it hurt. And then I was dreaming, I think. It felt like a lot of time passed. And then I was back and I felt like I'd changed so much, and all of you were just the same. I still get these dreams..."

To her horror, Vex sees a flicker of wetness dart down Pike's cheek. "Oh, Pike, I'm so sorry, I should never have—"

Pike swipes the back of a hand against her cheek in a rough, irritable motion. "Oh, it's fine, it's fine. I'm just so happy I'm back. I'm so happy you're back. I wasn't there, and I don't know if I could've..." She huffs at a particularly fractious knot in her bootlace, sits on the floor to get a better grip on it. "Is that why you wanted to ask? Are you having nightmares?"

Heaving a sigh, Vex leans forward to rub her face in her hands. "No. Not at all, actually. I think Vax has been having loads more trouble sleeping than I have. I'm starting to feel a little guilty about it. I feel fine. I feel... normal. Better, even."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?"

"Now I'm not so sure. All I feel is this sense of... of relief that my reaction to this is something I'm allowed to control."

Pike finally manages to yank off her boot, nearly overbalancing in the armor and tipping backwards. "All right. That sounds pretty good to me."

"I have my friends. I have my brother. I have purpose." She smiles, faintly. "I can fly, Pike. I really can. I think Vax will grow into his new role, and I'm not sure how to convince him of how proud I am of what he could become. How grateful I am for what he did. But we can move forward, and we can do it together, so there's no sense looking back. I know who I am, and I'm comfortable with that. I know that the next time I see some shiny pile of coin, I'm going to make a beeline for it and I might just forget to check for traps along the way. I know that the next time I see a drop, I'm going to jump and see if I can work out how to fly on the way down. That's who I am. I'm comfortable with that."

By the time she finishes talking, a little out of breath, Pike is sitting perfectly still, watching her. There's a long, long silence before she says, "Vex, I think you're wonderful. I could probably use a little of that self-confidence, but I'm not going to, to begrudge you that sense of purpose. You don't need to apologize for finding your way out of the dark. You don't need to apologize for finding your best self in your worst moments. It took me a long time to work that out. You're just a bit ahead of the game, is all. And I'm saying that as a very accomplished cleric, I might add."

Vex laughs, brushes her fingers against the corners of her eyes. "Well, o great and wise cleric, what exactly do I do with this great sense of purpose?"

Pike grins, glowing like the sun from behind a cloud. "Isn't it obvious? You fly."

* * *

Hand over hand, careful grip on the broomstick, magic word uttered—her pronunciation's getting damn good on that one—and she's flying, circling above the battlefield. The locket is heavy and empty in her hand, dangling as she shifts her weight, trying to see through the press of armed bodies to the hulking figure of their goliath. There. Grog's bleeding, raging, frightened and cornered. They all are. If he falls, they fall with him.

The trick, of course, is not to fall.

It's going to hurt, she knows, and the fear will snatch at her heart, but she'll do it with terror and love and strength echoing across the void inside her. They're never going to see her coming.

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out in a yell.

She flies.


End file.
